It is after Valentine's Day, 2012. On Monday the last external vestige of the journey through cancers will be removed--the port on the upper right side of my chest that snakes into my aorta. It took a leap of faith for me to schedule its removal...faith that there will be no further chemotherapy, faith that any IV insertion will be few and far between, faith that in some way the narrative is "over". Except when I get dressed and undressed every day and I see the huge scars and absence of a body part. Except that every three months for the next 10 years or so I will be monitored by my oncologist at Sloan-Kettering.
And then there was the lymph node episode around Thanksgiving 2011.
I had had an MRI in July and November. The July scan was normal and the oncologist chatted with me informally about my daughter's impending childbirth. But when I took my seat in November to show the klatesst pictures of scrumptious little Adam, she was not smiling.
"Lynne, there is a supraclavical lymph node on your left side that the radiologist has been monitoring for 3 months. Apparently it has grown substantially since July and you will need an emergency biopsy."
"What is it?"
"We won't know, but there are 3 possibilities. First, it could be metastatic breast cancer. If so, we will treat it as aggressively as possible...surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Or it could be metastatic lung cancer, for which there is no treatment. But we will search to get you into the best clinical trial we can."
"What's the third possibility?" I asked in a fog.
"It could be nothing."
I will cut to the chase on this narrative. I have mentioned the two angels in my lkife guiding me during the cancer wars, Lorraine in N.J. and Patricia in Washington state. It is Patricia who wrote the book and taught me about cell level meditation. It had provided help during my worst times, and I counted this as a new level of crisis, since either lousy option would now place me in a much worse prognosis category, somewhere along the lines of surviving 5 more years. If ever I felt that cell level meditation had value and worth, then this was the time to dig in with more conscious intentionality than I had ever attempted previously.
So I worked the meditation. Over and over. I went deeper and deeper, and put more faith...there is that word again....into the process. To be brutallky honest, so much of the UL-hand path is new to me, asnd I usually go into a practice with my fingers crossed behind my back. I'm a political scientist/rationalist/lawyer who came to spiritual and transformative work only since I was 40, not in my teens or 20s, as so many others who have discussed their paths. I never stayed at an ashram or had a guru; I did not do long meditation retreats or bolt off to India. I wish I had been one of those individuals, but that was not where I was located Kosmically as I grew into womanhood. I always feel as though I am playing catch-up, and I take my practice and intentions deeply sincerely and with the utmost integrity.
On Thrusday of the biopsy wweek my husband and I showed up where I had gone through three serious surgeries months before. I dressed in a gown, had an IV put into my port, and was wheeled into the OR. The surgeon went through her little speech:
"I'm going to make three incisions to get as much of the lymph node as possible, since we don't know if this is lung or breast cancer..."
"Or it's nothing, right??"
"Uh, sure," she stated dismissively.
She began going back and forth oiver the area where the lymph node was located with an ultrasound wand, but I couldn't see because my left side was draped. I felt the wand stop and then proceed up my neck. Then she paused. She spoke softly to her assistant and asked for the surgeon who had just finished up in the operating suite next to mine.
He entered, and thery shared a whispered conversation as I began to drift off. He then held the wand and I felt him going back and forth over my clavical..a pause..and then up my neck. Then total silence.
He lifted the drape from my face and said, "I suggest that you go home and buy a lottery ticket. Today is your lucky day. The lymph node has disappeared."
I was wheeled back into my room where my husband looked at me with alarm. I had not been gone that long for the biipsy to be executed.
I really did not know how to articulate what had just happened, so I drew his head to my mouth and whispered, "There is no lymph node. It is gone."
I dressed, we left in a daze, and yes, we did buy a lottery ticket, and no, I did not win money.
The next day I hasd to gt a prescription from S-K. When my oncologist's nurse saw me, she ran to the doctotr's office to alert her that I was there. Deena flew out of her office and hugged me tightly. Twice. When I asked if she'd like to analyze the results, she shook her head vigorously NO.
That is why I have faith, and dare I say it, more trust. But this is the other side of a continuum for me. I am through the sea change, but one never knows when it will reassert its miserable self-destructive presence. What Integral has provided me is a way to hold the enormity of what I have experienced, and faith that I can hold whatever comes along in the future. None of us get out of this journey alive, I am aware of that deeply and openly.
